CAPT Willard F. Searle, Jr. USN (ret.)

In his initial Navy career, which began during World War II, and in his subsequent civilian activities “Bill” Searle has been an active force for development and progress in international maritime salvage, diving and work under the sea – in Ocean Engineering. Practically no phase of those activities has been untouched by his review, supervision or active participation. Divers with modern protective equipment and effective tools work at previously only dreamed-of depths and times to accomplish once impossible tasks. Archaeologists can investigate history hidden underwater for centuries and millennia. Underwater structures for an amazing number of useful and necessary purposes are now installed in previously impossible locations. From among the technical development programs initiated by him in the 1960′s have arisen Remotely Operated Vehicles {ROV’s} and Autonomous Undersea Vehicle’s {AUV’s} which safely [and quietly in necessary] penetrate all areas and depths of the ocean and perform important tasks which are emblazoned in newspapers and headlines [or never mentioned]. All these are the result of a truly prodigious career.

The story that is told by this man from the Naval Academy to Submarine Salvage on to the H-bomb and the Deep Submergence Program; CAPT Searle saw it all.

Willard F. Searle Jr. was born 17 January 1924 in Columbus, Ohio. The attack on Pearl Harbor occurred during his initial year at Washington and Lee University, and he transferred to the US Naval Academy where he graduated in 1945 [wartime Class of 1946]. On 14 April 1945 he marched with his Naval Academy Company in the funeral cortege which accompanied the casket of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt from Union Station to the White House. His subsequent naval career focused primarily on salvage, diving and ocean engineering. He was designated as an Engineering Duty {ED} Officer in 1952 after graduate study in Naval Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1982 he was elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering.

After graduation from the Naval Academy in 1945 Bill Searle was retained there as an instructor in Marine Engineering, and used the assignment as an opportunity for graduate study in physics at George Washington University in DC. His first short-course diving instruction came at Norfolk in 1946 while serving in the fast attack destroyer USS MEREDITH (DD-890). He transferred to the USS WEISS (APD-135), which transported Underwater Demolition Team personnel, where he became familiar with their operations. From this ship he went to MIT and afterwards, in 1952, was a student at the Navy Salvage and Diving School, then in Bayonne NJ.

Two shipyard tours followed, at Charleston SC and then at Subic Bay Ship Repair Facility in the Philippines. At Subic he ran the shipyard Diving School. Also during this period he participated in and managed the salvage/clearance of several hundred wrecks from World War II, as well as being Technical Advisor for salvage operations in Manila Bay which were then being performed by the Japanese as part of their war reparations. In 1956 Searle was ordered as Engineering Research Officer to the Experimental Diving Unit, which was then located in Building 214 of the Washington Navy Yard [Naval Gun Factory]. After training at the adjacent Naval School, Deep Sea Divers, he was qualified as a Navy Deep Sea Helium-Oxygen diving officer, and received additional indoctrination in the diving activities of the Navy Underwater Demolition and Explosive Ordinance Disposal programs. At EDU he also has Additional Duty to the Bureau of Ships, which entailed assignment to a number of salvage, clearance, wrecking and towing operations worldwide. After two subsequent years at sea as Chief Engineer on the missile cruiser USS PROVIDENCE (CLG-6), he went in 1961 for a year of study at the Command and Staff Course of the Naval War College in Rhode Island. His next two-year assignment was as Pacific Fleet Salvage Officer in Pearl Harbor. In 1964 he returned to Washington and the Bureau of Ships as Supervisor of Salvage. It was then that, with his characteristic intelligence and energy, Bill Searle completely revamped and expanded the office and accomplishments of SUPSALV, established the Navy Directorate of Ocean Engineering, and placed his signature stamp on the character of Navy diving and underwater intervention which has endured for the subsequent quarter century.

As Navy Supervisor of Salvage from 1964-1969 he was responsible for the planning and buildup for the salvage and harbor clearance forces in South Vietnam, as well as major salvage and deep ocean search and recovery projects such as the H-Bomb lost off Palomares, Spain, the location of the sunken nuclear submarine SCORPION, and many others. He conceived and engineered the procedures which successfully recovered the Woods Hole research submersible ALVIN. He also assisted with the management of the United States’ first major oil pollution incident: the OCEAN EAGLE at San Juan, Puerto Rico. He was actively involved in the development of modern Navy deep dive systems, and of the Deep Ocean Technology (DOT) programs. He is a co-designer of the Navy’s heavy-duty TSF Oil Boom and was instrumental in initiating many of the NavyÕs early oil pollution control plans. Additionally he served on the interagency committee and co-authored (1970) the first National Oil and Hazardous Materials Pollution Contingency Plan.

His final assignment in the Navy was as Project Manager (Ship Acquisition) for auxiliary vessels including responsibility for all the Navy’s towing-types and (though the term was not used at that time) ocean engineering ships. His attention focused on the new-construction heavy duty ocean rescue and salvage ships of the EDENTON (ATS) class which were being built in England. These ships were the culmination of conceptual recommendations made by his predecessors in the Pacific Fleet Salvage Officer billet, and which Captain Searle has shepherded through the Ships Characteristics Board and the contract design phases. His interest in their design was in depth and in great detail, and it was only after the first ship (of three) was about ready for sea trails that Captain Searle retired from active Navy duty in 1970.

Beginning his retirement that summer Captain Searle was the founding Chairman of Searle Consortium, international consultants in ocean engineering, towing, salvage and diving. Because he had in 1956 interfaced with the World Bank-UN clearance of the Suez Canal, he was called upon by the United Nations, subsequent to a revolution in Bangladesh in 1971/72, to serve with the rank of Ambassador as a Special Consultant for the purpose of taking technical and executive charge of the UN Relief Operation Bangladesh (UNROB) in order to salvage and clear sunken ships from their waterways. In this capacity he supervised the work of four international salvage contractors working in the Port of Chalna and interfaced with the Russian Navy’s salvage teams working at the Harbor of Chittagong, the other major Bangladesh port.

He was also a principal in related firms SEAWARD Corporation and TRITON Marine Construction. In 1990 the Searle Consortium changed its name to MacKinnon Searle Consortium when Rear Admiral Malcolm MacKinnon USN (ret) joined its operations. Captain Searle ceased active participation in these enterprises in 1994 because of declining health.

Captain Searle was a senior visiting lecturer on the staff of the Department of Ocean Engineering at MIT. He had also been a visiting professor at the Maine Maritime Academy, and he lectured on salvage and ocean engineering subjects at Webb Institute of Naval Architecture. He also lectured at the University of California, Berkeley, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and several of the other state maritime academies. From 1970-1989 Captain Searle served two terms as a member of the Marine Board of the National Research Council. He is a member of the Marin Technology Society, the American Society of Naval Engineers, The Society of Military Engineers, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Royal Institution of Naval Architects. He was a founding member of the American Institute of Nautical Archaeology, and chaired the ANSI Committee to develop a standard addressing pressure vessels for human occupancy. The Undersea Medical Society awarded him Special Recognition in 1988 for his continuing support of physiological and medical research in undersea development.

The following Nineteen Oral History Interviews were taken by John T Mason, Jr. from 1971 to 1974. They remain in draft form but are made available by the efforts of CAPT Robert C. Bornmann MD, USN (ret.) and CAPT Richard D. Vann, PhD, USNR (ret.) to ensure their preservation. We would also like to thank Dr. Bornmann for writing the brief history above.